Dance of Shadows (Dance of Shadows - Trilogy)

by Black, Yelena

  “Don’t worry.” Margaret gave her a kiss on the forehead. “I’ll always protect you.”

  Turning away from her sister’s face, Vanessa pushed the iPad across the desk. “I—I don’t want to read anymore.”

  “Hey,” Blaine said gently. “Are you okay?”

  Vanessa gave him a quick nod but couldn’t look at him directly.

  “Oh, honey, don’t do that,” Blaine said, and pressed his hand to her brow. “If you want to frown like that in the privacy of your own room, fine, but I can’t sit here and watch you ruin that pretty skin with wrinkles.”

  TJ swatted his arm. “Leave her alone.”

  “I’m serious,” Blaine said. “We’re not going to look like this forever. We have to start planning for the future.”

  TJ rolled her eyes. “Do you want to talk about it?” she said to Vanessa.

  Vanessa bit her lip. “There’s nothing to say. Everything I know is probably in that article.”

  But Blaine didn’t relent. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk? Like really, really sure?”

  “Yeah,” she said, glancing up at him. “I’m fine. It was a long time ago.”

  Blaine let out a melodramatic sigh. “Fine,” he said. “But I hope you realize that if you were anyone else, I would nag you until you told me. You know how much I hate suspense.”

  Despite herself, Vanessa let out a laugh.

  “Seriously though,” Blaine said, his voice earnest. “You know you can talk to us.”

  “You’re not exactly who I’d go to with my deepest, darkest secret,” TJ said to Blaine. “No offense.”

  Blaine was silent for a moment. “I know I have a brash—and beautiful—exterior. But I can be serious too. Mostly it’s just easier to make fun of yourself before other people have the chance.”

  TJ pursed her lips and reached out to squeeze Blaine’s shoulder. “I get it.”

  Vanessa felt surprised by how close she felt to her new friends. “I was just cast as the Firebird too,” she said softly. “Maybe it’s my turn next.”

  “Your turn for what?” Steffie said. “Maybe all these ballerinas disappeared because they were stressed out. Maybe they ran away, or just dropped out without telling anyone. It doesn’t necessarily have to be sinister.”

  “But what if it is?” Vanessa said. “You have to admit this is a bit too coincidental. Lead girls disappear—lost without a trace. There is a pattern here, one that seems to have started twenty years ago, and that means someone or something is behind it. Right?” She looked around at her friends. “Otherwise, why would it center around girls performing The Firebird?”

  “Maybe it’s a particularly difficult dance,” TJ said.

  Vanessa shook her head. “Enough to drive someone to drop out? I don’t think so.”

  “But then what caused it?” TJ pressed. “Steffie said most of the girls who disappeared were cast as the lead in The Firebird, not all. Like Elly. She wasn’t cast in any production. There’s no rhyme or reason.”

  Blaine gave a brief smile. “One never needs a reason to rhyme.” The girls stared at him. “What?” he said. “It’s true.”

  Vanessa ignored him, leaning her chin on her palm. A part of her had never really believed that her sister had just run away. Margaret had been too happy at NYBA. And she was a good sister—if she had left school to start a new life, she would have told Vanessa. No, something else had happened to Margaret and the other girls. But what could explain all of the disappearances?

  “Justin,” Vanessa suddenly blurted out. The other three turned to her.

  “Justin killed them?” Blaine said, a little too loudly. As a few of their classmates turned around, he lowered his voice. “How do you know? I always thought he had a rage problem!”

  Vanessa shook her head. “No, I meant maybe Justin would have more information. After all, he did know that cast members were disappearing.”

  “Can you remember if he’s ever said anything else?” Steffie asked.

  Vanessa thought back to all of her exchanges with Justin, her mind drifting to the one conversation that she couldn’t shake from her memory. “He said Margaret kept a journal. She never showed it to anyone, but she told people that if anything happened to her, all would be revealed in her entries. He thought she was crazy, that it was all in her head, but maybe …?”

  “Justin said that?” Blaine asked. “I’m surprised he paid attention to anything she said.”

  “I think he liked her,” Vanessa murmured, thinking back.

  “So she rejected him,” Steffie said. “And he concluded that she was insane.”

  “Yeah,” Vanessa said, remembering how he had mentioned that she had stopped talking to him. “Though he didn’t seem bitter exactly. More sad. I mean, he couldn’t have thought she was that crazy or he wouldn’t have repeated what she’d said.”

  “If anything happened to her?” TJ repeated. “So she knew something was up.”

  “I guess so,” Vanessa said. “But everyone thought she was crazy.”

  Steffie leaned on the desk, deep in thought. “Sounds like an insurance policy in case anything happened to her.”

  “What did it say?” TJ asked. “The diary.”

  “I’ve never seen it. They shipped all of Margaret’s things back home after she disappeared. When my mom finally opened the boxes, I was there. I would have remembered a diary,” Vanessa said. “There wasn’t one.”

  “Do you think she was lying about keeping one?” Blaine asked.

  “No way,” Steffie said, answering for Vanessa. “If she thought someone was out to get her, she wouldn’t have left it in plain sight for anyone to find. She would have hidden it.”

  “But where?” Blaine asked.

  “If I were her,” Steffie said, “there’s only one place I would hide it.” She paused. “In her room. And by her room, I mean my room.”

  At the sound of the bell, they raced back to the dormitory. Steffie’s side of the room was cluttered with clothes and papers, but Elly’s side was as bare as the day she’d left.

  The slice of rosin was still on the desk from the night before. Vanessa wrapped Elly’s note around it and tucked it into her bag. Then she got on her hands and knees and, with the others, began to search. They looked everywhere—under the bed, behind the dresser, the underside of the drawers and the closet shelves; Vanessa checked the floorboards to see if any of them were loose. They emptied all of Steffie’s furniture, throwing her things in a pile in the center of the room. TJ even reached inside the radiator, emerging with a tangle of dust and spiderwebs.

  Blaine collapsed on Steffie’s stripped mattress. “Nothing.”

  Vanessa blew a strand of hair away from her face. “I guess it’s hard to believe that it would still be here after all these years.” She glanced out the window, where nothing but a thin screen separated the tiny room from the sprawling city. Was her sister out there somewhere? Was Elly?

  Steffie bent down and picked up one of her old pointe shoes. It was worn and tattered, the pink satin discolored with use. “But if the diary isn’t here, and it’s not at your house, then where is it?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Monday morning, and the clock on the nightstand blinked five twenty-nine.

  Thwarted by a deluge of homework, Vanessa and her friends had spent the last week in the library, which was so crowded with students studying for midterms that they could barely say a word without practically the entire school hearing it.

  Vanessa had stared at the arched entryway, waiting for Zep to walk through it, but he never did. Instead, her eyes fell on Justin, who was hunched over his books, scrawling quick notes with a pencil, the Fratelli twins on either side of him like bodyguards. With them around, there had been no way for Vanessa to approach Justin. And even if he knew something about her sister, did she really want to talk to him?

  The only time she had been able to steal with Zep had been during the previous week of preliminary rehearsals for The Firebird w
hile they were becoming familiar with the score and learning their steps. They couldn’t talk; rehearsals were silent unless Josef spoke; though just being close to Zep was enough. She barely noticed the other girls glaring at her, or Justin following their movements like a shadow.

  In those early days, Zep caught up with her after rehearsal, his chest damp with sweat, and together, they’d walk out of the studio and down Broadway, Zep’s warm hand grasping hers as if they were still dancing. They sat close to each other at dinner, squeezed into a tiny table until their knees knocked against each other. They laughed and chatted; Vanessa told him about how worried she was about living up to the expectations of her role, about how difficult the steps were and how she had so much to learn. Zep assured her that her technique was perfect; she just had to practice more. He touched her hand, sending a shiver of warmth up her arm and making her forget herself, if just for a moment.

  She should have been brimming with happiness, yet something about each date was strange. It wasn’t just that they were exhausted, parting ways at the end of the night quicker than she would have liked. It was the sense that he was holding back on her. She was always the one divulging her feelings, and he the one who comforted her, but whenever she asked about him and how he spent the rest of his time, he dodged her questions. He was really busy, practicing and working with Josef. On what, she didn’t know. Only that it had to do with his technique and getting him into a good corps next year.

  She wanted to press him but held back. Maybe because he was a senior and she a freshman, because he was Zeppelin Gray and she was just Vanessa, the redhead who somehow won Zep’s heart, though no one, including herself, could understand why. Even his texts were brief, and though they seemed sweet on the surface, they felt somehow impersonal.

  You were beautiful at dinner tonight.

  Loved dancing with you this morning.

  Vanessa couldn’t pinpoint exactly what about them disappointed her. They were walking through the steps, saying all the right things. But to her it didn’t feel like a relationship; it felt like a rehearsal.

  Then, as the week progressed, the little time they had together began to vanish. Vanessa noticed that Josef seemed more impatient with Zep, barking at him for reasons Vanessa couldn’t quite grasp. And that wasn’t the only thing that seemed off. Once, through the window in the door, Vanessa thought she saw the Fratelli twins glaring at Zep, but when she blinked, they were gone. She was seeing things, she concluded. Yet every day when they were through, Josef would pull Zep away to his office—to discuss his part, Vanessa guessed—and she retreated to the library, burying herself in her books. But all she could think of was Zep, and when she would see him again. Was he her boyfriend? Was it real? Or was he somehow slipping away from her?

  TJ turned over but did not wake as Vanessa slipped out of bed. She muttered in her sleep—nothing but gibberish, though her tone was pained. She hadn’t been sleeping well lately, and had been short-tempered, especially when the subject of Elly came up. She didn’t understand why no one else was as worried as she was. Vanessa made sure not to wake her.

  Outside, the streets of New York were quiet, save for the soft swoosh of cars rushing down Broadway. She dressed and tied her hair in a loose ponytail. She slung her dance bag over her shoulder and slipped into the hallway.

  She had planned to go to the dance studio downstairs, to stretch out and warm up for the first real rehearsal, when they would dance, rather than walk through, their parts. But when she reached the lobby, she hesitated. Through the glass panes on the door she saw a group of teenagers walking down the sidewalk past Lincoln Center, carrying skateboards and backpacks. Vanessa watched one of them buy a donut from a street vendor. Her bag slid down her shoulder. She realized she didn’t know what it felt like to take a leisurely walk with friends and not talk about ballet or rehearsal, to eat a donut and not feel guilty afterward, to have afternoons free to do whatever she wanted. She could go, she realized. The lobby was deserted. No one would see her leave.

  She glanced down the hall toward the studios, understanding for the first time how her sister must have felt when she decided to run away. All she had to do was push open the door, and she could leave everything—the Firebird cast, the catty upperclassmen, the mysterious disappearances, Justin and his two sidekicks, even Zep and his aching absence—behind.

  She took one step forward, and then another.

  And then her phone rang.

  As Vanessa fished her cell out of her bag, a janitor appeared from around a corner, carrying a mop and pail. She must have stared at him, because he gave her a curious look as she answered the phone.

  “Mom?”

  “Oh, Vanessa, I’m so glad you picked up.” Her mother sounded breathless.

  Vanessa went rigid. “Why?” she said, glancing at the clock over the foyer entrance. “It’s six in the morning. Is everything okay?”

  “No, I don’t know what came over me. My throat went dry, I began to sweat—which as you know, I never do—”

  “What happened? Do you need to go to the hospital?”

  “No, nothing like that. I’m just so glad you picked up. You never pick up anymore. It worries me.”

  Vanessa let out a sigh of relief. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m just so busy with The Firebird and all.”

  “I was just thinking about that and how proud your sister would be. And how proud I am. I know I haven’t been as supportive as you’d like, but I just don’t want you to literally follow in her footsteps.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your sister was so young when she was cast as the lead, and she—I guess she was too young, and she couldn’t take the pressure. And now you’re the lead, and I—I just don’t want to lose you too.”

  Vanessa glanced out the doors at Lincoln Center, a pang of guilt passing through her. “Don’t worry, Mom.” She picked up her bag. “I would never run away. I’m actually on my way to the studio now.”

  Vanessa watched the janitor mop a circle of the floor by the stairwell. He caught her eye when she finished speaking, as if he knew what she had been considering. She broke his gaze and began walking down the hall to the practice studio.

  She could hear her mother breathing on the other end. “Okay, honey, I believe you. Really I do.”

  “Hey, Mom. Did Margaret ever tell you about a diary she was keeping?”

  “Not that I know of,” said her mother. “Did you say you were going to the studio? Isn’t it awfully early for that? I don’t want you to hurt yourself or spend all of your free time practicing.”

  Vanessa was ready with a response, but when she heard her mother’s words, she went quiet.

  “And what about your dizziness? Is that getting worse?”

  Vanessa glared at the phone. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing,” she said. “It only happens when everything goes right, so I don’t see why you think it’s such an issue.” But the truth was, Vanessa had been disappointed when she realized that none of her new friends seemed to suffer from the same problem.

  “I’m just trying to help you,” her mother said. “You know you can come home at any time. We can set up your room the way it was before you left. It will be just like old times.”

  Vanessa bit her lip. She couldn’t leave now. What about her friends? And Zep? For once, she finally felt like she was getting somewhere, slowly collecting all of the odd pieces of information surrounding Margaret’s disappearance. If she left now, she would never know how they fit together. “I can’t, Mom. But I’ll be home in December. It’s not that far away.”

  Her mother sighed. “I understand, honey. Just thought I’d try.” She paused. “I miss you.”

  The pain in her voice made Vanessa’s heart feel heavy. “I miss you too,” she said, and it was true.

  The girls’ dressing room downstairs was dark when Vanessa ran inside, slamming the door shut behind her, suddenly furious with her mother for mentioning her dizziness. The fluorescent lights buzzed in the s
ilence. She threw her bag down in the corner and fiddled with her locker. For some reason it wasn’t opening, and, without thinking, she kicked it hard. It popped open, spilling out all her clothes and supplies.

  She let out a cry and collapsed on the floor, rubbing her foot, which was already sore and blistered from daily classes and rehearsal. Gingerly, she slipped off her shoe. Her toes were taped with bandages, the skin around them cracked and bruised. She flexed her foot and winced. A pair of scissors lay among her things on the floor. The metal was cool against her skin as she cut the tape and began to peel it off.

  She could still hear her mother’s voice clearly as she ripped off the first bandage. We can set up your room the way it was before you left.

  She ripped off the next bandage. It will be just like old times.

  Her toes were caked with scabs, swollen, and stiff. Using a cotton ball and ointment from her bag, she dabbed her feet with hydrogen peroxide. A sharp, searing pain shot up her leg. She closed her eyes. If she were honest with herself, she would have admitted that in an odd way, she liked how it felt. She pressed her lips together, bearing it.

  Vanessa practiced alone, blasting Stravinsky through her headphones, until the Firebird rehearsal began. Every time her mother’s voice cut through the music, she turned the volume up and pounded harder. A flutter of the flute and she inched across the floor, spreading her arms by her sides. A horn, sudden and abrupt, and Vanessa flung her body, the music tugging her forward and back. Then an eerie whisper, like fog crawling through the forest, and she lofted herself onto her toes. The ribbons bit into her ankles, but she closed her eyes and began to spin until the floor felt hot beneath her feet, and the music grew slower, stranger.

  She grew dizzy.

  The mirrors bent and warped, distorting the room. Her limbs seemed to buckle beneath her, and, unable to support herself any longer, she set her heel to the floor and came to an abrupt halt, her body wavering as she regained her sense of balance. It wasn’t an issue, she told herself. But a part of her wondered if this time her mother might be right.